FunnyJunk lawyer Charles Carreon drops lawsuit against The Oatmeal

And let common sense prevail! Just about a month after sending a cease-and-desist letter to The Oatmeal (aka Matt Inman) and asking for $200,000 then filing a lawsuit in retaliation after he couldn’t get the fundraiser shut down – the lawsuit has now been dropped.

Charles Carreon, the guy above who made himself famous with the sex.com domain name litigation, basically thought that he could win by suing Inman and two charities and claimed the charities were started up by Inman. He was probably taking something because that is a ludicrous idea. To be fair on FunnyJunk, the lawsuit was initiated by Carreon himself.

The EFF has picked up his notice of voluntary dismissal, and Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opshal said, “Matthew Inman spoke out against Carreon’s threat of a frivolous lawsuit, in a very popular and very public way. This was nothing more than a meritless attempt to punish Inman for calling attention to his legal bullying. We called him out on this in our briefs, so it’s no surprise that Carreon was left with no choice but to dismiss.”

EFF’s Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry also added, “We’re very pleased that Carreon has seen that his lawsuit had no merit, and hope that this is the end of his abuse of the legal system.”

However, Popehat has some interesting analysis. It might not be over because, since he has dismissed it and not the courts, Carreon can refile it at any date. But there’s also an interesting turn of events with a vexatious serial litigant called Jonathan Lee Riches, who has filed another lawsuit on ‘behalf’ of Inman. According to Popehat:

However, whoever did it, I submit they’ve crossed a line they may regret. Filing a frivolous and farcical lawsuit as performance art in your own name is one thing. Filing it falsely under someone else’s name is a false statement to the courts.

Nobody has managed to get in contact with Carreon – he has since disabled his Twitter account, and the contact form has been shut down because of “security attacks instigated by Matt Inman.”